


She Thought, He Thought

by AlwaysSpeaksHerMind



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Attraction, Canon Compliant, F/M, More PG, One Shot, not really teen, thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 05:06:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10824384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlwaysSpeaksHerMind/pseuds/AlwaysSpeaksHerMind
Summary: Since they crossed paths in Pop's, Veronica and Archie have kindamaybesorta had a thing for each other. Possibly. But they don't act on it...until they do, and then they ignore it. Covers Riverdale 1x01-1x11, and is in both V&A's POV.Basically, I wrote this because the characters fascinate me, and there's not enough Archie/Ronnie fanfiction out there. (And because I rewatched a lot of episodes, and that gives me ideas.)





	She Thought, He Thought

     Veronica Lodge was nobody’s fool. Or at any rate, not unless she wanted to be. If, as she had once told Betty, Jughead was Riverdale’s very own Holden Caulfield, Veronica was its Scarlett O’Hara. She even had the resume to prove it. Fall from an enviable life? Check. Command the attention of every gossip for miles? Check. Do everything in your power to restore your family to what it once was, only to find out the hard way that life doesn’t _give_ do-overs? Double-check. Love, hate, friendship—it was all the same to her. At least, it had been when she first arrived in the tiny town she’d largely referred to as _Not New York_ when talking to her mother.

     Full of a bitterness so consuming that at times it horrified even her coldblooded self, Veronica had made up her mind to hate Riverdale long before she set foot there. Logically, she knew they had no other options—that she ought to be grateful. But on an emotional level, she didn’t care. She loathed everything about the town, from its tacky welcome sign that actually used the word _pep,_ to the disgustingly quaint appearance of literally everything.

     But then she met the people. Betty Cooper, Jughead Jones, Ethel Muggs…they were the kind of people New York Veronica would have died before associating with. Any interaction she would have had with them probably would involve sadistic comments and cruel actions. Kevin Keller—she liked to think she would have still been friends with him, but likely it would have been more for the connection to law-enforcement than anything else. And Archie Andrews. Oh, she knew exactly why New York Veronica would have interacted with him. It was, in fact, the reason why she’d begun interacting with him in the first place.

     It was not, however, why she continued interacting with him.

     When she’d first seen him, she’d been interested. She hadn’t lied when she’d told Betty and Kevin that he was her only missing boy-flavor. Her reasons were simple: he was there, he was reasonably hot, and she was bored. So when she’d found out about Betty’s deep and hidden love, she hadn’t cared all that much—backing off, clearing the track for a girl who always went out of her way to do the kind, good thing seemed like the least she could do.

     But then, stupid Cheryl and her asinine game had happened, and somehow, Veronica found herself standing in a dark coat closet with the boy she’d mentally classified as “good for distraction purposes,” talking with him in a way that made her question every single one of her assumptions. Because the fact of the matter was that Archie Andrews just wasn’t anything like she’d expected. When she tossed out her usual smokescreen of glibness, he didn’t knuckle under the way almost everyone did. When she dismissed him and all possibility of his worldly experiences, he refused to let it go without argument. And when she gave him the chance to back away from the kiss, essentially dared him to blink first like any decent Nice Boy trying to not hurt anyone’s feelings would, he agreed with her that it was a terrible idea…and proceeded to make out with her anyway.

     It was that shared moment of stupidity in a stuffy little room that first alerted Veronica to the danger Archie Andrews posed for her. Standing there in the darkness, both of them willfully ignoring all sense and reason as their lips explored one another’s, she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she wasn’t the only one playing a part. Archie, for all his small-town talk and nice guy charm, had a rebellious streak in him that Veronica recognized, and a part of her desperately wanted to drag it out of him, to force him to go openly against the flow for what had to be the first time in his life if only so she could have some company. But the instant the kiss ended, reality flooded back in. She was the girl who specialized in trampling everything and everyone who got in her way, and he was the boy who was everyone’s friend. If she had any hope of leaving New York Veronica behind, messing around with him was out of the question.

     So she didn’t. Instead, she and Archie began the strange dance they’d been doing ever since. For lack of a better word, they were friends. But every so often, he would say or do something, or she would say or do something, that had her questioning whether or not they’d succeeded in their plan to ignore what had happened between them. And sometimes, when she looked over and caught him drifting off in thought, pulling back from everyone around him even while he continued to smile and nod, the desire to wrap her arms around him and scold him, or tease him until he had to laugh was almost overwhelming.

     She supposed that, in a way, what happened at the party was inevitable. Everyone had gone. He needed someone to be there. To listen. So did she. They were both drunk enough to be honest, but not drunk enough to be careful. She could have stopped it, and so could he. Both of them knew it, yet neither even tried. That same inexplicable thing that kept them constantly circling in or near the other’s orbit drew them together once again, and this time, they didn’t bother to fight it. She was in his lap, in his arms—somehow she was in his bed, and all she could think about was how right the whole thing felt. Even in the morning, when she kissed him goodbye and tiptoed out so as not to waken him, the feeling lingered. When she told him at school that she thought they should ignore yet another shared moment, she knew it was for the best. Her life was far too complicated already; so was his—neither one of them needed to walk down a path that could potentially involve more hurt. But when he stepped closer in the schoolroom, smiling down at her, prepared to sign on for whatever favor she asked, simply because she was the one asking, the warmth in her chest was almost overpowering. And when he caught her by the arms in the trailer, steadied her when she was too afraid for her crumbling family to worry about pretending to be fine, Veronica knew she was in serious trouble. She should have chased him off by now. He should have had the sense to run far away from someone who knew how to destroy others with nothing more than words, and who, moreover, _relished_ doing it.

     But he didn’t. He was a sweet idiot, and a little part of her maybe loved him for that. Maybe.

***

     The very first time he saw her, Veronica had snagged his attention. Sure, she was drop-dead gorgeous, and Archie was a dumb guy who didn’t always think with his brain. But even so, he knew right off the bat that it wasn’t her looks. It was her. She’d walked into Pop’s dressed like a fashion model, a stranger in a place where everybody knew everybody, and she hadn’t batted an eye or even tried to blend in. When she’d seen him staring at her—and he _had_ stared like a moron; he knew that and it embarrassed him even now—she hadn’t looked away, or blushed, or done the little smile and quick downward glance that all the girls he knew did when they made accidental eye contact. No, Veronica stared right back at him, and then breezed on over and introduced herself to him and Betty with the kind of confidence you couldn’t help but admire. When they were at Cheryl’s and the bottle pointed in what was roughly Veronica's direction, he’d looked at her without a second thought, immediately nervous. But once they were locked in and he started asking questions to combat the awkwardness, the way she fell right in with it, matching his personal interrogation with her own—it got to him. He was telling her about feeling that special thing with someone else, and yet he’d never wanted to kiss anyone as badly as he wanted to kiss her. And when she kept getting closer, kept not backing away when _he_ got closer, it was almost more than he could do to hold still and see if she’d blink first.

     But she didn’t, and neither did he. They kissed, even though no one was there to force them to. And suddenly, with Veronica’s hands running through his hair and her mouth on his, seven minutes seemed like a really short amount of time. He didn’t understand how he could be this comfortable with a girl he barely knew, but he wanted to find out. Except the signal knock came, they exited to find Betty missing, everything became a mess, and they both talked it over and just sort of agreed to forget the whole thing for the sake of friendship.

     And he did forget the whole thing. Kind of. Or, he tried, at least. It was a lot harder than he’d thought it would be. Because the only way he could really, truly forget about that moment was by ignoring Veronica, and Veronica Lodge was not an easy person to ignore. He’d be congratulating himself on being able to stay solidly in the friend lane, and then she’d do something like march into the boys’ locker room dragging a freaked-out Betty behind her, shove him out of the way before he could even get around to offering to help, and he’d be right back where he started, staring after her like a jackass. Or she’d catch him getting into one of what Jughead called his ‘Angsty Jock’ moods, and depending on what it was about, she’d either make some sarcastic comment that annoyed him so much he had to argue back, or she’d say something so nice and encouraging that it was kind of shocking.

     She was hard to predict, but easy for him to read, and he hated seeing how she insisted on fighting the world by herself all the time when she was always urging him to not do the same. He knew most of the kids at Riverdale High saw her as the spoiled brat from New York, Daddy Lodge’s little princess who put on airs and could rival Cheryl Blossom in pure ruthlessness. But to him, she wasn’t so much Veronica Lodge, heartless ex-heiress as she was Ronnie, his good friend and maybe something more. Her ice-queen exterior was (mostly) a front, because Veronica was too smart to give anyone ammunition to use against her. He’d seen her hurting over her father, seen how betrayed she felt. Her worst lash-outs had been exactly that: lash-outs, because she wouldn’t just tell people that something had hurt her; no, she was bound and determined to fix everything herself even while she acted like it was no big deal.

     When she’d showed up to Jughead’s birthday party upset, he’d followed her into the kitchen to see her crying and trying to hide it, same as always. He hadn’t been in the best spirits himself at the time, but seeing her like that hurt in a way he hadn’t expected. She was the strong one, the wise albeit smart-alecky one who was always there to verbally smack some sense into him whenever he most needed it. It was just wrong for her to have to feel powerless. He wasn’t surprised at all at how viciously she took down Cheryl in the so-called “game;” if anything, he felt proud of her. While he sat with his jaw on the floor, wondering how anyone could respond to that kind of deliberate, in-your-face spitefulness, Veronica sailed right in and let Cheryl have it.

     Later, after everyone had left and they were sitting together on the couch, he found himself confessing all kinds of things to her—things he didn’t really even know he thought until he said them and realized they were true. She had that kind of effect on him. And when she told him her fears about her parents, and he saw his own dread mirrored in her face, he couldn’t help it. He leaned in. Kissing her might not have been the smartest thing he’d ever done, but it was the only thing he could come up with right then that got anywhere close to what he wanted to say. He was a little scared when he pulled away that she might leave. That she might tell him he was being drunk and stupid, and would regret all of this in the morning if he even remembered it.

     Instead, she bent down, her hand sliding over his face, her nails brushing against his neck and into his hair as her lips moved over his and she moved on top of him. It was amazing, and reassuring, and terrifying all at the same time, and when he woke up to find her already gone, he knew he had to talk to her. This business of acting like just friends was stupid. He wanted to be there for her, to help her when she needed it the way she helped him, to be the thing she leaned on when the fighting got to be too much and even her strength was exhausted. Saying otherwise was lying.

     So he sought her out at school, and she told him all the reasons why it was a bad idea. And she was right. Of course she was right. But it didn’t change how he felt one bit, so when she asked him to go with her on the craziest, most intrusive wild goose chase ever, he agreed. He didn’t think it was a great plan and told her so, but he went with her anyway. And the more they searched for evidence, the clearer her desperation became. When he pointed out that they had checked literally everywhere and found nothing, and he watched her self-possession unravel in a way he hadn’t seen before, he finally understood. She was so desperate to know once and for all her father’s guilt or innocence that she wasn’t being her usual cool, rational self, and he hated seeing her brought low like this. Catching her was instinct; so was comforting her. It was a relief when she smiled at and made sarcastic fun of his example, because it meant she was recovering, but it wasn’t until she kissed him that he knew she’d decided to accept his help. Just this once, probably, but at least it was something.

     And so, when they were up on stage in front of half the town, singing an eighties’ cover at a dumb high school dance, he took every opportunity he had to remind her that he wasn’t going anywhere.

     Not unless she wanted him to.

**Author's Note:**

> Riverdale reminds me in all the best ways of Veronica Mars/Buffy/Twin Peaks. I love the tone, the cheesiness, the kitsch, the characters--it's all just so fun. Veronica and Archie piqued my interest at the beginning, because they're both people who know how to fit in/make people envy them/look like they've got it all, but they've got so many fears and insecurities underneath...and then there's that little dash of badness they've both got. It's a blast to watch them together.  
> Side note: There's no dialogue here because I kind of wanted to try writing something without it for a change.  
> **Characters belong to Archie Comics/CW's Riverdale**


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